The Shield of Time (11 page)

Sauvo took another stool; in the ancient world, chairs with backs were rare, mostly for royalty. He helped himself to wine and a fig. “Not to fear, camarado. Whatever clues they came upon, they’ve misread. They think the trouble spot is elsewhere, years uptime. They sent a man to inquire here-now merely in the interests of thoroughness.”

He related the story that Everard had told in the vihara.
He got to Chandrakumar in prison and used a kyradex on him,
the Patrolman realized.
No secrets any
more. But most of what Sauvo learned ain’t so. Thanks, Shalten.

“Another change-scheme!” Draganizu exclaimed.

“Ours will nullify it and its operators,” Raor murmured. “But first, yes, it would be interesting to learn more about them. Perhaps even to contact them—” Her words stole off into silence, like a snake after prey.

“First,” Draganizu said sharply, “we have the fact that this … Holbrook … broke free and is running loose.”

Raor recalled herself to immediacy. “At ease, at ease. We have his weapons and communication equipment.”

“When he doesn’t report in—”

“I doubt the Patrol expects to hear from him at once. Set him aside for the present, together with those conspirators. We have more urgent matters at hand.”

Draganizu turned to Sauvo and asked, “How did you obtain privacy for interrogation?”

“You haven’t heard?” His fellow was faintly surprised.

“I only got here a few minutes ago. I have been busy with affairs of my Nicomachus persona. Raor’s note said nothing but ‘Come.’”

Hand-delivered by a slave,
Everard deduced.
No radio. Maybe she feels confident still, but the “Holbrook” business has made her ultra-cautious.

Silken shoulders rose and fell. “I had persuaded Zoilus to arrange solitary detention for any prisoners taken in this matter,” Raor said. “I told him that my connections led me to believe they are dangerous spies.”

And when guards and prisoners at the hoosegow were mostly asleep, Sauvo used a timecycle to pop into the cell. Raor was willing to allow that much risk; she didn’t figure it was likely the Patrol had anyone in Bactra besides Chandrakumar and Holbrook, one now locked away, the other deprived of his gear and on the lam. Sauvo gave Chandrakumar a stun beam, clapped the kyradex on his head, and when he came to, interviewed him. Thoroughly.

I hope he left the little guy alive. Yes, he doubtless did.
Why make the jailers wonder? What could Chandrakumar tell them tomorrow that’d show them he was anything but a lunatic?

Draganizu stared at Raor. “You do have him besotted, do you not?” he said.

“Him and several more,” Sauvo responded, while Raor demurely sipped her wine. He laughed. “The seething, jealous looks that Majordomo Xeniades gets! And I’m only supposed to be her employee, not her pimp.”

Ah. Sauvo is Xeniades, chief of the household staff. Worth remembering…. I sympathize with Zoilus and company. Wouldn’t I love to get milady in the sack myself?
Everard’s grin twisted.
Though I wouldn’t dare fall asleep in her arms. She might have a hypo of cyanide tucked away in those raven locks.

“The Greeks are holding Chandrakumar for us, then,” Draganizu said. “But what of the equipment that Holbrook had?”

“He left it behind when he went out, at the house of the man in whose company he arrived,” Raor explained. “That person is simply a local merchant. He was dismayed when the squad came to say his guest is a spy and confiscate the guest’s baggage. We have no reason to make further trouble for this Hipponicus, and in fact, obviously, it would be unwise.”
That’s a relief!
“As for the baggage, it is here.” Her smile curved feline. “That took a little persuasion too, but Zoilus obliged. He has his ways. I have passed instruments over the property. Most is of this era. Some contains Patrol apparatus.”

I guess she stowed it with the timecycles.

Raor set her goblet down and sat straight. Metal rang in the liquid tones. “It shows we must be warier than ever. Overleaping space-time to get access to the prisoner was taking a necessary chance.”

“Not a substantial one.” Sauvo presumably wanted to remind her, and perhaps inform Draganizu, that he had maintained this beforehand and that events had justified him. “Holbrook was no more than a courier, and of low
grade. Physically formidable, but now his teeth are drawn, and it is clear that his intellect is limited.”

Thanks, buddy.

“Still,” Raor said, “we must track him down and dispose of him before he somehow gets in touch with others, or before the Patrol takes alarm and comes looking for him.”

“They won’t know where to look. They will need days merely to gather the first clues.”

“We need not help them,” Raor clipped. “If we can detect electronics, nucleonics, gravitronics, chronokinesis in action, so can they, and at much greater range. We must not give them any hint that any time travelers other than themselves are present. Between tonight and the climax, we use no more high technology. Is that understood?”

“Unless in emergency,” Sauvo persisted.
Yeah, he’s trying to assert himself, trying not to be overwhelmed by the Varagan.

“That emergency would likely be so extreme that our only course is to abandon this whole effort and scuttle off.” Raor’s scorn softened. “Which would be a pity. It’s gone gloriously thus far.”

Draganizu had his own self-assertion to make, in his own more querulous style. “Glorious, pleasurable, for you.”

He got a look that could have frozen helium. “If you think I enjoy the attentions of Zoilus and his kind, you are welcome to them.”

Their nerves are wearing thin, after all the long underground toil. They’re mortal too.
It encouraged.

Raor relaxed again, took up her wine, crooned, “I admit the puppeting of them has its interest.”

Evidently Draganizu reckoned it prudent to return to practicalities. “Do you even forbid radio? If we cannot call Buleni, how shall we coordinate action?”

Raor arched her brows. “Why, you shall carry our messages. Did we not make the arrangement precisely in order to have a communication line in reserve? Siege or
no, the Bactrians will let the priest of Poseidon go out on business of his temple, and the Syrians will let him fare in peace. Buleni will see to it that they respect the temenos, whatever they do elsewhere.”

Sauvo stroked his chin. “Ye-es,” he mused aloud. The three must have been over this same ground and over it during the past year; but they weren’t so inhuman that they didn’t find comfort in repeating things to each other, and in their language it was quickly done. “An aide to King Antiochus can exert that sort of authority.”

It jolted through Everard.
My God! Buleni sure worked his way up, didn’t he? Our man among the Syrians hasn’t got anything like that rank.
Slowly:
Well, Draganizu mentioned Buleni’s been at it for more than five years. The Patrol didn’t figure it could spend that much lifespan.

“Indeed,” Raor added, “it is natural that Polydorus come personally to the temple and make an offering.”

Buleni’s played his Polydorus role as a Poseidon devotee,
Everard deduced.

“Ah-ha!” chuckled, quite humanly, Draganizu, otherwise known as Nicomachus, priest at the rural temple of the god.

Raor’s words fell crisp. At last they were getting down to brass tacks. “He should be on the alert for your possible arrival. When his pickets inform him you are on your way out of the city, he will go there himself, and engage you in private conversation. This will be late tomorrow, I think, although first we must see how circumstances have evolved.”

Draganizu turned uneasy. “Why so soon? Zoilus can’t give you Euthydemus’ battle plan before he knows it himself. At the moment, surely, Euthydemus has none.”

“We must establish the liaison in local eyes,” Raor told him. “Besides, you can inform Buleni of the situation here and he can give you the latest details about the Syrians.” After a moment, carefully: “The two of you must make certain that King Antiochus is aware of your meeting.”

Sauvo nodded. “Ah, yes. Confirming for him that Polydorus does have ties to persons within the city, yes, yes.”

Comprehension shivered in Everard:
“Polydorus” has told Antiochus that he has kinfolk inside Bactra with such a grudge against Euthydemus
—
resulting, maybe, from the usurpation—that they are ready and eager to betray their king. Antiochus must be inclined to believe. After all, he has Polydorus there for a hostage, and Nicomachus will come out from behind the walls. If things go right, Nicomachus will presently give Polydorus the plans according to which Euthydemus means to sally forth. Tipped off, Antiochus stands to win a quick victory. He’ll be impressed, and grateful, and ready to accept Polydorus’ family into his court. I daresay the lovely Theonis has her intentions concerning him. Be that as it may, the Exaltationists will have their foothold
…
in a world without Danellians or anything but shards of a Time Patrol … and they can go on and try to mold it however they want.

The rumors about Theonis’ witchcraft won’t hurt.
Everard’s skin crawled.

“You will have to meet him a second time at least, to convey what Euthydemus means to do, once Zoilus has told me,” she was saying. “If nothing else, we want no significant doubts in the mind of Antiochus about the intelligence we supply.

“Of course, at the critical moment, it will again be electronic communications and timecycle surveillance for us. If necessary, energy weapons. I hope, though, that Antiochus will dispose of his rivals in a normal way.” Laughter rippled. “We do not want
too
sorcerous a reputation.”

“That would attract the Time Patrol,” Draganizu agreed.

“No, the Patrol will be nothing, from the instant when Euthydemus dies,” Sauvo replied.

“Its remnants downtime will not vanish, remember,” Draganizu pointed out, needlessly except to emphasize what followed. “They will not be negligible. The fewer
clues to ourselves we leave, the safer we will be, until we have grown too powerful for anything they might attempt. But that will be the work of centuries.”

“And what centuries!” burst from Raor. “We four, the last four who are left, become creator gods!” After a moment, deep in her throat: “It is the challenge itself. If we fail and perish, we will still have lived in Exaltation.” She sprang to her feet. “And we will pull the world down with us, aflame.”

Everard clamped his teeth together till his jaws hurt.

The men in the room rose too. Abruptly Raor went fluid. Her lashes drooped, her lips curved upward and swelled, she beckoned. “Before the next hard and dangerous days begin,” she sighed, “this night is ours. Shall we take it?”

The blood leaped and throbbed in Everard. He dug fingers into soil and hung on, as if to anchor himself before he splintered the door and seized her. When he could see clearly and the thunder had faded from his ears, she was departing, an arm around either companion’s waist.

Each man carried a candle. They had blown out the rest. Raor left the room, and night possessed it.

Wait. Wait. Give them time to settle down to their fun. Those two lucky bastards
—
No, I’m not supposed to think like that, am I?
Everard considered the stars above him.

What to do? He’d stumbled into a treasure hoard of information. Some repeated what he already knew, some merely satisfied curiosity, but some was beyond valuation. If he could communicate it to the Patrol. Which he could not. Unless he found a transmitter. Should he risk trying, or should he retreat pronto?

Slowly, as he squatted among the blossoms, doubt hardened into decision. He was on his own, isolated. Whatever he did was a gamble. Complete recklessness amounted to dereliction of duty, but he thought he dared raise the ante by a chip or two.

He judged that almost an hour had passed. Raor and her boys would be well engaged, their alertness to the
outside world set aside. Alarms must be spotted throughout the house, but probably not against entry. Those would be too liable to go off unnecessarily, when slaves or visitors went in and out; and that incident would be hard to explain away to them.

He rose, flexed cramped muscles, approached the still open window. From his purse he took the flashlight. About four inches long, it bore the appearance of an Apollo figurine carved in ivory, such as people often carried. When he squeezed the ankles, a pencil beam sprang from the head. What he had heard tonight confirmed what he suspected, that detectors were set to register electric currents, or other anachronistic forces, in this vicinity. He assumed the Exaltationists bore signal receivers on their persons that would inform them. This little gadget, though, was a photonic fuel cell, its action no different in principle from his breathing.

Guided by brief flashes, he slipped over the sill, into the room, out to a corridor. Lynx-footed, he passed a pair of open entries and took glimpses. The chambers beyond were furnished with ordinary opulence. Two more had interior doors, shut. The panels of the first were wood sculpture; nymphs and satyrs seemed to leap when the light touched them. He doused it, and the muffled sounds he heard were like their gibing merriment. On the other side, clearly, was where Theonis entertained her gentlemen friends. Everard stood for a minute, Shalten by desire, before he could move on.

What the hell is it about her? Looks, behavior, or does she give off something that works like a pheromone?
He forced a smile.
That’d be an Exaltationist sort of trick, all right.

The other door was plain and massive. The room it led to evidently occupied the whole rear of the house.
Yeah, this has got to be where their hoppers and other gadgets and weapons are.
He wasn’t about to try picking the clumsy lock. It was for show. The real lock would sense him and scream.

He padded upstairs but stopped at the landing. A few
flashes cast around sufficed to verify his guess that this level was everyday utilitarian. Theonis would quite naturally seal off one chamber, where she kept the costly gifts that a meretrix of her class received. Any other visible secrecy would have excited comment.